http://mealticketonus.com/

Introduction

Tina, from mealticketonus.com, runs a website based off the distribution of freebies through affiliate sites.  She wants to optimize her site for search engines and through monetization with PPC (Pay Per Click) ads or affiliate deals.  The benefit of running a site like this is that people love free stuff and you get the affiliate money for referring people to it.  I know a lot of people who are registered on certain forums just to be the first one to get a free deal.  A site like this can capitalize on this interest.  The difficult part about doing this site, in particular, is that it is new.  Gaging the effects of specific changes tends to be difficult to measure if you don’t already have a user-base.  On the flip side, it is always nice to optimize your site before you know you need to make changes.

Presentation

The first thing I saw on the page was the center.  The font is way too bright for a white background.  Why not use black font?  I have to stare close to the screen to read anything.  Some other obvious changes that I noticed (which wasn’t too obvious, at first) is your header - the one that says “Meal Ticket On Us… etc.”  I had to highlight the page before I saw that title.  If you don’t want it to appear there, remove it and manually type in “Meal Ticket… etc” in the title if that title is linked by PHP to your page title (<title></title>).

Your menu (Home/Contact Us/News/Links) appears twice.  You only want it to appear once.  Your logo also needs work - something without the first image that you saw when you Google’d “Freebies” ;)  - use something that will blend with your background.

I think the major part of your site that needs to be improved is organization (oh yes, I went for the bold AND italics for extra emphasis).  Your main content is parsed by your “Popular” links, and your Google ads really make everything confusing.  There are good ways of using Google ads (like your left sidebar), and there are confusing ways.  Use your Google ads to space out your content - to provide a divider, in some respects.  In other words, change the dimensions - even change the colors so it blends with your site.  Of course, if you change your dimensions, you will also have to edit those article clips that are at the bottom.  Maybe remove the Google ad altogether?

Your goal, I am assuming, is to maximize profit.  To do this, you will also want to maximize legitimacy.  The more ads and affiliates you have crowding your site, the less legitimacy your content has.  This is true because your actual content will be far overshadowed by your affiliates.  I see that happening right now (at least with the Google ads).  You should desire trust - because without trust from your users, your “freebies” will be confused with “scams.”  Confusing those two would be a plague to your traffic.

The right sidebar isn’t organized well either.  Try to keep font size consistent and orderly.  You have some stuff centered, some stuff aligned to the left, some stuff underlined, some stuff small, some large, etc.

Decrease the links at the top menu.  There are too many and they have been pushed down to a lower level.  You will want to fix that - maybe put them over to the left?

Also, think about your audience. They will want to be updated every time you make an addition to your website, correct?  Position your RSS feed links to the top of your sidebar so people can easily access it (and so they are aware you have one).

Making these changes will be a good start.  Down the line, when changes have been made - I will revisit sites and do another analysis upon request. Making these changes takes work - websites take work.  All of my sites do - so just because I review sites doesn’t necessarily mean I’m not banging my head against a table from the tediousness desig when I am making sites.

Technical

Find these lines in your code:

<br /><center><a href=“http://www.JustFreeStuff.com”>

<br /><img src=“http://www.JustFreeStuff.com/buttons/jfsani1.gif” width=“60″ border=“0″ height=“31″
<br />alt=”Just Free Stuff “></a></center><br><br>

And fix the IMG tag so it isn’t parsed by the <br />.

Outside of that, your METAs look good, title is fine - but could be more specific!  Remember you are competing with every other site with the word “free.”  That’s a TON of sites - hey, look, more <B><I>!   Be specific and use adjectives.  That will get you to the top of the search engines.  One thing that may hurt your SEO is your frequent use of the word “Free.”  They MAY see that as saturation of a keyword… however, I always like the do what you want, as long as it is usable and it gets your point across philosophy.

I like the keywords “Meal ticket.”  You’ll probably hit a top spot with that one in no time.

Also make sure your HTML validates. That’s important to search engines.

The Lo Down

-New, original, blended logo
-Organize your content
-Make sure your content is clear and obvious
-Reconsider positioning/shape of the Google ads in your entries
-Change your font color!  I don’t want to see anymore lime green font on a white background!
-Move RSS up
-Standardize font size on right sidebar
-Organize right sidebar
-Get rid of extra menus and redundancies
-Shorten top menu

Conclusion

Your site looks far from professional, but it sounds like you have the content ideas down.   It could definitely use an overall face-lift.  I think the main issue right now is that it is messy!  Organize everything so it is presented neatly.  Make sure we can see your content, because when it is all said and done - content is king.  You want to maintain reliability, so reconsider your ad placement.  Make sure the ads aren’t overwhelming the content.  If they begin to overwhelm your content, things will again become messy and your credibility will considerably decrease.  I would be happy to do another analysis once you have made some of these changes, if you would like.  It is my hope that this will help you get off to a great start!

Main factor: Organization